tying up your loose ends
by Moonlit Daybreak
Summary: In which Sara Lance fights some robots, encounters burnout, has a feelings sleepover, and finally kisses her best friend. (The first fic in this series, Least of All An Adventure, is referenced, and I suggest reading it first.)
1. Chapter 1

When Sara opened her eyes, still muddled from blood loss, Stein reached up with the back of his hand to touch her cheek. Her smiled at her, and she smiled back. The feeling lingered after he was knocked unconscious and Rip's hand closed around Sara's throat.

It was a parental gesture. That's what she thought as she strained for breath, already aware that she was too weak to fight Rip off.

When Sara was young, her family lived in an apartment. Her mother was in graduate school. Her father worked as a line order cook by day and took criminal justice classes at night. She and Laurel shared a room, trundle beds side by side. At bed time, their mother sat between them and read from the Little Golden books that lined the floor of their closet.

After extra stories and glasses of water had been requested, she always took Sara's face between her hands and kissed her on the forehead. Laurel considered herself too old for such a tender gesture. She was in the middle of a silly stage, and preferred for their mother to tickle her and dodge away, laughing.

They fell asleep to the dance of the aquarium night light on the ceiling, and the sound turning pages and a scratching pencil from the kitchen, where their mother studied.

The year Sara started first grade, they moved into a house in the suburbs, where she and Laurel got their own rooms. Years and years after her mother stopped tucking them in every night, around the time Sara hit her wild teenage years, Laurel revived the gesture. Every time she lectured Sara, she began by placing her hands on Sara's cheeks. Sara read it is as condescending, which was likely how it was intended. At that age, Laurel acted like she was decades older than Sara, instead of two years and a few months.

Still, Sara never shoved Laurel's hands aside. It stirred something within her, and the gesture worked its way into her physical vocabulary. She did it with Oliver, she did it with Nyssa, and they both learned to reciprocate. When she was finally reunited with Laurel, Sara's hands were well-practiced.

It wasn't a habit Sara brought on board the Waverider. It was too intimate for those she already lived in such close quarters with. Rip took her face in his hands once, right after Laurel died, which Sara tried not to think about. It was too close to an omen.

In the present, Rip's grip tightened. She heard he and Jax speaking, but not Stein.

She could swear, in the haze, that her cheek was on fire where he had touched her. It was something. Maybe her mother reaching out through the hands of another parent. Maybe Laurel, welcoming her back as Rip snapped her neck.

* * *

As a rule, Sara does not talk about death. She talks about dying, sometimes. Never death.

* * *

But then, air.

She took a moment to collect herself before she opened her eyes and was captain again.

Stein was there, and she did not look at his hands. "Where's Jax?" she asked.

"Your neck was broken," Stein said. "I still don't know about the structural integrity of your spinal cord."

She sat up and wiggled her fingers, then her toes. They tingled a bit, like they had fallen asleep, but moved fine. She kicked her left leg out, testing it, then reached down to examine the significant bloodstains on her torso. "I'm fine. Just sore. What happened to Rip?"

"Mr. Jackson followed Captain Hunter off of the ship," Gideon chimed in. "He took a gun with him. Dr. Palmer is hanging from the reset switch and could use some assistance, and the others have yet to return."

Sara cursed. "Thank you, Gideon."

"I believe that Mr. Jackson intends to kill Captain Hunter," Martin added. "Gideon, is Ms. Lance able to move?"

"Her bullet wound has yet to fully heal, but she won't do any further damage by walking."

"I've got Jax," Sara told Martin, accepting his help as she rose off the chair. "You get Ray."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure," she said. "He's going to regret this if we don't stop him."

She bundled up and set out into the cold to pass on the favor Oliver had done for her years before, when he shot Anthony Ivo twice in the chest.

* * *

For the first year or so she was on the Waverider, Sara didn't decorate her room. She kept her clothes in drawers and everything else in a trunk in the corner. After all, it wasn't really her room, was it? It was the place she had been assigned to sleep, for the mission. Even after the team's place aboard the Waverider became permanent, the only change she made was to start leaving her toothbrush and shampoo in the bathroom. The others followed her lead, which meant both the Waverider's bathrooms were a cluttered mess unless it was Ray's week to clean them.

Her room was a slow process. The first thing to go up was a corkboard she had Gideon fabricate, where she hung photos from back home (several of her family from old days and three of various iterations of Team Arrow, courtesy of Thea). After Jax left her a page out of one of his books (she knew it was him, even if he didn't sign it), she hung it in the left corner of the board.

Jax came by after their mission at NASA, right before shit really hit the fan.

"Are you and Rip okay?" he asked. "Things got pretty tense earlier."

She patted a spot next to where she was sitting on the bed, sitting criss-cross to make room for him. "I talked to him. I think we worked it out."

He settled next to her at the foot of the bed and looked up at her corkboard.

"You should really put a picture of the team up," he commented.

She scoffed. "I can't let everyone know I actually like them. It would compromise my authority as captain."

"I think they already know, Sara," Jax replied. He tugged on the threads of one of her blankets.

"What's up?" she asked. "I'm guessing you aren't just worried about me and Rip."

"Nate's really torn up. And something's up with Amaya, something besides Commander Steel."

"We'll keep an eye on both of them," she assured. "What's really going on?"

He looked up from her blanket to meet her gaze. "I'm really glad you didn't go back to open the airlock," he said. "That's all."

At another point in her life, Sara would have seized the moment, leaned over, and kissed him. For a split second, she thought he would instead, but he just smiled sadly at her, and she felt too dark and heavy to initiate anything.

"I'm glad, too," she replied instead. She reached up to clutch her necklace. Laurel had fought very hard for her life, and she intended to keep it for as long as she could.

Maybe it was a mistake to hesitate, but things were too muddled and complicated in their lives at the moment. Jax was solid. Their relationship was simple. They both needed each other to lean on, and Sara knew it wasn't the right time to try anything beyond friendship.

Jax leaned back on her bed, hands folded across his stomach. They both sat in silence for a long time, thoughts running in circles.

* * *

The dinosaurs were a problem. To their credit, Sara's team kept it together, by Legends standards. One aberration after another pinged in on Lily's device, and the Waverider still couldn't make jumps reliably. Jax borrowed Ray for the first few days to do whatever he did down in the engine rooms, but eventually their initial suspicions were confirmed. There was nothing wrong with the ship- time itself was broken.

Sara sent them to go retrieve Nate and Stein from where they were holed up in the library, examining the timeline. She, Mick, and Amaya had been the only boots on the ground, working nonstop, while the others tried to figure out the damage. Now that she was fairly certain they had the whole picture, she felt comfortable letting everyone fall back into their old roles.

"The mission hasn't changed," she told them. "We find aberrations, and we fix them. Hopefully the pace will slow down. If it doesn't, we'll figure something else out."

So they launched right back into their rhythm at a breakneck pace. Jax started devising titles for her mission reports in the style of Magic Treehousebooks, a reference which the rest of the team missed. Polar Bears in Pompeii wasn't nearly as fun as it sounded. Train in the Thames clocked in at 311 words, four times the length of her normal reports, because it ended with Ray naked in the river and Nate having to toss him clothes off a bridge. Sara wasn't about to let that incident go undocumented.

The aberrations were finally starting to taper off when an alert went out from 2017. A rush of adrenaline carried her through a short conversation with Cisco- news from home was rarely good, and this conversation was no exception.

"What do you mean, Barry's gone?" she asked him. "He's dead?"

"Not exactly." His hair was much longer than the last time she saw him, and he was also carrying himself differently. His shoulders arced straight back.

"Is he missing?"

"No."

"Did he just….leave?"

"It's complicated. He's gone, though. Just a heads up. Also, we were hoping you all could come help us out like….now."

"Please tell me it's not dinosaurs. That might be our fault."

"Alright, first of all, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Second of all, no. It's robots, and also possibly a supervolcano. This vibe's not gonna hold for long, can you all come back?"

"Forward," Sara corrected. "We're in the Neolithic era right now. You catch all that, Gideon? Set a course."

"Right away, Captain," Gideon responded. "Setting course for Central City, 2017."

* * *

People were already swarming S.T.A.R. labs by the time they arrived, several whom Sara didn't recognize from the Dominator invasion a little less than a year ago. This time, there was no spare moment for introductions.

Sara had an armful of twenty-two year old the moment she entered the cortex. "Hey!" Thea greeted her, pulling back to reveal that she was in costume, which was weird, because the last Sara heard she wasn't using Speedy anymore. "Can Dig, J'onn and I take Nate? We're dealing with the volcano, and we need to see if he can go in without melting."

"Sure, take whoever. You don't even have to bring them back."

"Go ask Felicity and Iris what's going on," she ordered, grabbing Nate by the arm and pulling him back the way they came. "Thanks."

Sara turned to Mick and Amaya, the only members of her team who hadn't already peeled off. "You guys good?"

"We're fine," Amaya assured. "Go."

Felicity and Iris were on the far side of the room over some set-up someone had rigged out of the normal S.T.A.R. labs monitor.

Felicity looked up to meet Sara's gaze, and something faltered in her expression.

"What?" Sara asked, heart dropping.

Felicity shook her head. "Sorry, nothing. Well, no one's dead. It's good to see you."

"My dad's fine?" Sara asked, getting her worst fear out of the way. Thea probably wouldn't have greeted her so casually if anything else was the case, but she wasn't sure.

Felicity rose and pulled her into a hug. "Your dad's fine. I'm sorry. I just realized that there's some stuff you should probably know. Nothing bad, just….complicated stuff."

Sara hugged her back. "Complicated seems to be the word of the day."

"Speaking of-" Felicity turned around to gesture to the spread of technology. "We're about to have twenty people out in the field. Codename only over the comms."

She pulled up a map on one of the screens and zoomed in. "This is the town we're evacuating. Two hundred miles away from Central City, and a population of four thousand people. The robots- no snappy name yet, Cisco's working on it- have blocked off most of the traditional modes of transportation, so we've decided to really mess with them and evacuate to a whole different dimension. Vibe- that's Cisco's codename, and Charmer- that's Cynthia, you'll like her- are in charge of that, but they need a lot of extra hands."

Sara nodded. "Take Amaya. She's helped man mass evacuations before, she knows what she's doing."

"Great," Iris said, swiveling her chair to join their conversation. "Sara, can we use the Waverider to get our people to the evacuation zone? We've got two speedsters on hand, but they can only take one person at a time."

Sara considered it for a moment, and then nodded. "You want me, Ray, or Jax to pilot. Martin or Nate in a pinch. No time travel though, and I wouldn't make any jumps either. Long story, but it'll just make everything worse. Oh, the jump ship. Ask Jax if it's back in working order. That's a long term project of his. I kind of crashed it into a meteor, but it could be useful."

Iris leaned over toward Felicity's screen and grabbed what Sara guessed was the S.T.A.R. labs approximation of a computer mouse. "The supervolcano is thirty miles out from our evacuation zone, along the New Madrid faultline. We've got three tasks right now. The evacuation has already started, and it's pretty straightforward, but time consuming. Right now we have no clue what to do about the volcano, but we just sent Dig and Thea to do recon."

"They took Nate with them," Sara informed her. "And someone named J'onn?"

"Codename Martian Manhunter," Felicity said. "He's one of Kara's. As in, she brought him with her, but also in the sense that he's an alien."

Iris pointed to a woman with short hair and a man in a mask who were gathered over a map with a kid in the Flash suit who definitely wasn't Barry. "That's Alex and James. They're also friends of Kara's, but they're not aliens, apparently."

"I thought Kara said Alex was her sister?" Felicity asked. "Kara's an alien but her sister isn't?"

"That's definitely not the weirdest thing about what I just said," Iris pointed out. "Sara, there's a lab straight down the hall and to the left. Cisco and Oliver were in there earlier drafting a plan of attack for the robots. If we can overtake them fast enough, we might not have to deal with the volcano at all. Can you find Kara and look over the plan together?"

"Sure," Sara responded, but before she could walk away, Felicity grabbed her by the wrist.

"Hey," she said. "Seriously, talk to Oliver if you get the chance. It's stuff you probably need to hear from him."

Which meant it wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation. Sara braced herself for whatever was coming her way and left to cortex to find Kara.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes when Sara fought, everything else went away. Her hard-earned muscle memory took over. She found the ideal headspace of an assassin, devoid of any emotion. There was no bloodlust or anger. There was only her body, the enemy, and the terrain.

Hours passed like this. She moved from building to building alone, targeting reinforcements where they waited in basements and cellars. Because the robots weren't sentient, her brawls began to follow a pattern. It felt almost like training, rather than a battle with real lives on the line. Occasionally she varied her methods to try and find some way to disable the robots completely instead of simply hitting them with her electrocuted staff.

Finally, Iris caught her attention through her comm. "Supergirl figured figured out how to disable them, White Canary."

Sara dodged into a stairwell and raised her forefinger to the speaker. "What's the plan?"

"Wild Dog and Mr. Terrific are coming your way. You three need to drive them out into the streets," Iris ordered.

Sara moved up to a rooftop and waited until she saw two men on the ground, one in a hockey mask and the other carrying with an armful of silver spheres. She regretted her lack of gear. The silk she used to carry in the league would have been perfect for a dramatic entrance to intimidate some of the newbies. Instead, she whistled to catch their attention.

"I drove them out to the main level of this house," she shouted. "Get them on the streets and then meet me next door."

Rene and Curtis fought well from what she observed at a distance, but Sara stayed one house ahead of them. She had a system and they had a system- there was no need to try and force a team up.

Supergirl flew above them and contained the robots in the same general area with her heat vision. Sara was toward the end of the street when she heard a not-quite-familiar-enough cry and whirled around.

A woman in black was screeching, and the robots shorted out in waves before her. In the open air, Sara was out of range of the waves of sound, but she clapped her hands over her ears anyway.

It couldn't be. It really, truly couldn't be, but she darted toward the figure anyway. Screw the plan. She had to know.

Rene snagged her by the arm as she ran past him. "Hey, hey, hey!" he yelled.

Normally, she would taken him out, but instead she paused and spat out "It's not-"

"It's not your sister," he assured, and Sara felt her heart plummet, not enough to break it, but close. Before the devastation could fully hit, she turned it into anger. Her chest became a conveyor belt churning it out in bursts, and she sprinted back toward the last few houses.

Once all the robots were out on the streets, Sara reached for the microphone button. "Overwatch!" she yelled. "Where's Green Arrow?!"

There was a long silence on the other line, and when Felicity finally answered she was all business. "We need need to regroup back in Central City. The Atom is on the Waverider coming to pick you three up. Green Arrow is already onboard. Supergirl can bring Black Canary back when they finish."

"Okay," Sara responded.

"Are you alright?" Felicity asked.

"You should have told me," Sara said.

"Sorry. Your father- he knows. He's the one who let her use the name. We would have asked but it's hard to contact you, you know?"

"I know," Sara said, attempting to soften her tone.

She joined Rene and Curtis on the ground and they moved out to an open spot where the ship could land. They both made light conversation between themselves, intentionally giving her some space, and Sara felt a quick pang of regret for how standoffish she was being.

When the Waverider landed, Oliver was waiting for her in the cargo bay. Sara directed Rene and Curtis toward the front of the ship. "Tell Ray we'll be up in a second," she instructed.

"I'm sorry," Oliver told her as soon as they had turned the corner. "I know how that must have felt."

It wasn't a platitude. Oliver did know. Sara herself had often been the cause. "Who is she?" Sara asked.

"Her name is Dinah Drake. She's a police officer, and a meta. That cry- it's all her. That and an amplifier Cisco built."

"Felicity said my dad signed off?"

Oliver nodded. "Laurel wanted it to be something that was passed on."

"I didn't know that," Sara admitted. "We didn't have the chance to talk about that kind of thing."

"It was right before," Oliver said. She met his gaze, and it was raw. Everything was raw between them, and she didn't know why. Most of it had scabbed over years before, and nothing was different on her end.

Sara held up her hand, frantically blinking back tears. "We should- some other time. We need to... Felicity said there were things you needed to talk to me about. Was that all?"

Oliver sat down on a crate. Sara stayed standing, arms crossed, too anxious to settle down. "There was this man- Adrian Chase. He called himself Prometheus. He lured me to the island, with everyone. Nyssa, your dad, the whole team. My son and his mother. Everyone's fine, but it was a close thing. He hooked up explosives through the whole island. The whole- you know how big it was."

"Was?" she asked.

"It's gone. The whole island is ash. He's dead. I didn't do it- he did it to himself, to trigger the explosives."

Sara watched Oliver. His shoulders were still tense. "We'll be back at Central City in a second. Please just tell me everything. Rip it off like a band-aid," she urged.

He shook his head. "Slade. He helped me. We're on- not good terms, but better. I know you never got to know him without the serum."

"I met him," Sara reminded him. "For about a half hour. Are you sure you can trust him?"

"I'm not planning on making it a habit," Oliver responded, and she rolled her eyes at his non-answer.

"Anything else?" she asked.

"You know about the other earths, right? Do you know about the dopplegangers?"

"A little," Sara told him.

"There's this woman from another Earth who's been antagonizing us for a while. She showed up last year and claimed to be Laurel- she said you messed with time and saved her. It wasn't our Laurel- we call her Black Siren."

"What was she trying to do?" Sara asked.

"Kill us all. Or that's what she said. There's bits and pieces in there that seem like they could be good, but she's not Laurel," Oliver insisted. "It's her face but it's not her life. It's not Laurel."

"Dad knows?" Sara clarified.

"He knows," Oliver assured. "That's everything I can think of right now. Do you have anything for me?"

Sara snorted a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I had the chance to kill Damien Darhk. I didn't. We wiped his memory and put him right back on track to kill her."

Sara hadn't been planning on ever telling Oliver about that, but it made her feel better to have something to fire back with.

Oliver's forehead hit his hands and he was silent for a long moment. Finally, he spoke. "I know you wouldn't have done that if you had any other choice. You don't have to explain it to me."

"All right." Sara sat down hard on the crate next to him, prying loose the tight grip she'd had on her staff. "I'm going to hug you but- later. I want to have a normal conversation first"

"Deal," Oliver agreed. The Waverider rattled to a stop.

"Ugh," Sara groaned as superheroes filed back into the cargo bay. "We need to get those brakes looked at."

* * *

Sara ended up taxiing people back and forth on the Waverider for most of the second day of action. There was a scary moment that evening when it looked like Spartan might be down. Sara only got looped in toward the end of the crisis when they decided they needed her to intervene with Gideon's tech. It was touch-and-go for about fifteen minutes, but in the end he was okay. She took Dig to an ARGUS safehouse where Lyla could meet him once everything was over.

After that, Ray took the Waverider and Sara grabbed the jumpship. She caught about an hour of sleep before headquarters woke her up and asked her to go guard the entrance of the volcano.

"By the way," Felicity added. "The volcano isn't actually a volcano. Turns out it's made of petrified alien feces."

"So the lava isn't actually lava?" Sara asked.

"Oh, no. The lava is definitely lava. If that non-volcano erupts, we're still very screwed."

"So is there any good news?"

"Well, right now there's five of our people inside the shit volcano trying to infiltrate a secret layer. And at the moment, I'm not currently asking you to go in. Just hang out near the tunnels at the base and whack anyone who tries to get past you. Also, let me know if you hear, see, or smell anything unusual."

"You want to know if there's anything unusual about the shit volcano?"

"That would be helpful, yes. Gotta go."

All Sara got from the headquarters over the next twelve hours was periodic check-ins and a request to please not attack Curtis when he arrived to join the rest of Team Volcano.

"Anyone dead?" she checked as he moved past her.

He flashed her a thumbs up. "All good."

Finally, after the sun set and Sara's visibility was way down, Iris caught her attention.

"White Canary, Speedy's going to take over for you. We need you back at headquarters."

"On it," Sara responded.

Iris and Felicity looked nearly as beaten down as she felt when she walked through the entrance of the cortex.

"You're limping," Felicity told her, barely looking up from the computer.

Sara shrugged. "Fell off a ledge fighting some asshole robot."

Felicity typed for a few moments before her forehead creased and she glanced back at Sara. "You never used to flinch."

It took a moment to figure out what Felicity was talking about, but then Sara remembered. " Pain and I came to an understanding a while back ," she had said, bent over a table as Oliver stitched up her lower back."

Those scars were gone. Most of her scars were gone, and the new ones that layered her skin carried gentler memories with them.

"It's been a long time," she responded. "What's going on?"

"Ray and Nate are on their way back," Iris informed her. "Some alarm is going off and Ray said Gideon is worried about it."

Sara hovered over the board, eavesdropping on the comm conversations for a few moments before Nate appeared, Ray right behind him. "Gideon found them all at the same time. There's no obvious link but they've never popped up so quickly before. I don't know if it's because of the spear or what we're doing right now, but-"

She held up a hand to shoo them off. "Okay, okay. We're on it, just go figure out what we're dealing with."

Felicity ended her conversation with Cisco. "Vixen and Heatwave are still on Earth-Three with Vibe and Jesse Quick retrieving the people we evacuated there," she informed Sara. "Do you want to me to pull them out?"

"Not yet," Sara said. "Not until Ray and Nate come back."

Iris killed her comm as well. "How's Wally?" she asked Felicity. "I haven't had the chance to check in with him in a while."

"Cisco didn't say anything, so I assume he's doing fine," Felicity assured. "I still can't believe he's that kid who tried to tag along during the invasion last year."

Iris smiled. "Good. Yeah, we should have started training him earlier. We just never thought he'd have to step up like this so soon."

Felicity placed her hand on Iris' shoulder. "I'm really glad everyone's okay. We've lost too much. I don't think I could take anything else right now."

Iris nodded, took a deep breath, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry," she said when she had collected herself.

"You're fine," Sara assured her. "I'm so sorry about Barry, Iris."

"Thanks. I don't think you all have anything to do with the speed force, but if you all ever get involved with it-"

"I'll give you a call," Sara promised.

"Sara!" Ray called, poking his head back into the Cortex. "Sorry. We just got another alert. The year zero."

Felicity slammed her hand down on the comm. "Vixen. You and Heatwave need to get back here ASAP. You all need to go save Jesus, maybe. Or, actually-" She turned to Sara. "Um, please don't kill a religious figurehead."

Sara heaved a sigh and shrugged. "Probably not. We'll figure it out as we go along."

"So the usual plan?" Ray asked. He waved to Felicity. "I'll go get Martin and Jax. Meet us at the Waverider, Captain?"

"Yeah," Sara muttered, casting another glance across the monitor, looking for any loose ends they hadn't yet figured out how to wrap up.

"Be careful!" Felicity called after Ray as he left.

Can you pull up Oliver?" Sara asked Iris. "I don't know how to work all of this"

Iris nodded and fiddled with the comms. "Green Arrow, I've got White Canary," she announced after a moment.

We have to go," Sara told him, leaning into the microphone. "Something's happening with the timeline. Are you okay without us?"

There was heavy breathing and crash from his end, but when he responded his tone was calm. "We're fine. Do you need backup?"

"Uh..." Sara responded. Truthfully, up until that moment it had never occurred to her to ask for outside help.

Felicity rolled her eyes and leaned in. "Green Arrow, how is Guardian's arm? Supergirl mentioned that something happened."

"There's an arrow in it. Not mine."

"Yeah, it better not be."

There was another crash and some static which blocked out Oliver's response. He tuned back in after half a minute of silence on both ends. "We're fine. Guardian's fine. Agent Danvers is taking him back to HQ. White Canary, are you leaving now?"

"Yeah," Sara responded, and found herself at a loss of what to say.

He saved her from her awkward moment of hesitation. "Stay out of trouble."

"You, too."

His line cut out. Felicity shut it off and pulled Sara into a hug. "Be safe. Keep Ray safe. And the rest of them, okay?"

"I'm trying," Sara responded honestly.

* * *

The disruption to the timeline missed the birth of Christ by a couple of months, so they were able to set things straight relatively quickly. Sara did a headcount as they stumbled back through the main hall, making sure they hadn't managed to forget anyone or pick up any strays (the latter seemed to happen more often than the former, oddly enough).

"Is everyone alive? Anyone hemorrhaging blood? Anyone traumatized?"

All of the groans or grunts she received in response seemed vaguely affirmative.

"Ray's definitely concussed," Jax added.

Ray blinked slowly for a moment. "Did you just tattle on me?"

"Go to the med bay, Ray," Sara ordered. "Please don't wake me up unless something's on fire."

She hovered around long enough to watch everyone head toward the med bay (Ray and Nate), the kitchen (Mick), or their rooms (Stein, Jax, and Amaya). Then, she went to her own room and changed out of leather into cotton. She lowered herself into bed slowly, all of her aches hitting her at once. She fell asleep gazing at her corkboard, somehow feeling more distant from everyone on it than she ever had before.

* * *

On the island, there is rubble. Ash. Deeper down, bones. Of Robert Queen, whose grave she saw only once. Of Shado, resting in a space that should have been hers.

Sara was buried at sea. There is still some part of her out there, halfway between the shore of Lian Yu and where a freighter once anchored. The bones of a girl she no longer is scatter the floor of the ocean. They were dropped there one by one until Anatoly Knyazev looked her up-and-down and asked "When did you get so scary?"

Some debris must have scattered into the ocean, in the explosion. Ivo was never buried. She spent many years imagining animals tearing his corpse limb from limb. But now that there is no purgatory, his bones will find any piece of her they can. They will sink to the bottom of the ocean and wrap around hers at grotesque angles, trapping her there forever.

She will never rest.

* * *

Sara bolted awake in her bed outside of space and time, knife in hand. Ivo was dead, and he could not find her on the Waverider.

(But Malcolm did.)

(But death did.)

(But grief did.)


	3. Chapter 3

A few days later, after they tussled with some soldiers during the Crusades, Jax poked his head in the door of the library. "Got a sec?" he asked, holding up a first aid kit. "There's this cut on my shoulder. I would bandage it myself, but it's at an awkward angle."

"Gideon?" she asked, waving him over anyway.

"Busy with Mick, and Nate's getting checked out as well." He sat down next to her on the ottoman and pulled his blood-stained t-shirt off. "Right side."

She leaned in to look at the abrasion. It wasn't bleeding too badly. "There's some debris in here. What happened?" She reached for the tweezers.

"I got thrown before Grey and I merged. Otherwise I would have had the suit on."

"Is your head okay?" she asked.

"Nah, it's all on my shoulder. I know how to take a hit," he said.

"Jock," she teased. "This is going to hurt." She blotted away some already-clotted blood and he flinched. "You sure you don't want to wait?"

"I just need a distraction. Talk to me. You've been holed up in here ever since we left 2017. Nate's pissed that you stole his research spot."

"Nothing much to tell. Just searching for anachronisms."

"You can't do that out here with the rest of us?"

"I'm disinfecting this," she warned him, before pouring rubbing alcohol over his shoulder. She waited until his fists unclenched before shoving him lightly. "If you want to ask me something, ask."

"What happened when we were home? Ray said you and Oliver had a tense conversation. Was it about Dinah?"

Sara sighed. "Partly. We hadn't had the chance to talk in a while. There were a lot of things we needed to catch up on."

"Are you mad that she's using Laurel's identity?"

"It was mine first. The name. The basics of the costume. I made the original sonic devices. Laurel improved on all of it once I died."

"Were you mad when she used it?"

"Of course not. I'm not mad now either, I just wish they had warned me. It was- jarring."

"I'm sorry," he told her, trying to turn around to look her in the eye.

"Stay still. It's fine."

"It's really not."

They lapsed into silence so Sara could tear tape for the gauze with her teeth, her other hand pressed to Jax's shoulder.

"You're all done." she announced finally, pleased to see that no blood was seeping through the gauze. "Get Gideon to fix it if it's still bothering you later."

"I didn't know you used to use the Black Canary identity. I assumed you and Laurel came as a set."

"I've only ever used White Canary with this team. It's kind of obsolete at this point. It's not like I need identity concealment."

"You're a hero," he told her. "Heroes get a name."

Then, she was no longer in the library with Jax. She was somewhere else. Her chest was tight. Her stomach was burning.

Oliver was holding out a hand. She was in the water, floating. She was on the roof, then falling.

Laurel was throwing a glass at her head. She was in the pit. She was six feet under, in a corset.

She was in the fire, a child in her arms- but. No. There was a man strapped to the table, and her knife dug into the sole of his foot.

"Sara?"

She was across the room and couldn't remember moving. Her hands were shaking, and she had a glass figurine from one of the shelves gripped tightly in her hand.

"Are you okay?" Jax asked her. He was standing several feet away, hands up.

"I'm sorry," she said, though she wasn't sure yet what she was apologizing for.

"What do you need?" he asked, and nearly hysterically, Sara decided that she needed to write Beverly Jackson a thank you note for raising such a fantastic human being.

She needed to not be in charge. She needed to figure things out without putting her team's lives on the line. "I need to go home," she said.

Jax nodded. "Gideon?" he called. "Tell everyone to start packing their bags. We're taking shore leave."

There was a short argument about whether it rude to park the Waverider in the S.T.A.R. labs parking lot without asking permission first, but as the conflict faded Sara watched her teammates' gazes land on her.

* * *

"Okay," she said, shouldering her half-empty duffel bag. "We'll meet back here next Saturday- six o'clock sharp. Stay out of trouble, but if something goes wrong, you have phones. Use them."

Mick and Stein both made a beeline across the parking lot as soon as she was done speaking. Martin was eager to see Clarissa and Mick was dodging Ray's attempt to hug him goodbye. Undeterred, Ray turned to Nate and pulled him into a tight embrace.

Bro," Ray said, meaningfully.

"Buddy," Nate responded, tightening his grip.

"It's a week!" Jax exclaimed. "Are y'all seriously having separation anxiety right now?!"

Sara moved toward Amaya. "Hey," she said, voice low. "I know you won't, but just in case- you and Nate should stay out of Detroit, okay?"

Amaya nodded, and thankfully didn't seem to take offense. "We're going to stay with Nathaniel's mother for now, and maybe visit to Washington, D.C. later in the week."

"Meeting the mom. Big step."

"Should we stay in a hotel instead?"

"Not necessarily. If Nate's ready for this, and you are, too, then I don't see a problem with."

"It'll be fine, Amaya," Jax cut in. "Good for you two."

Sara brought out her phone to dial a cab to the train station. "Five minutes," she told Ray once she ended the call, and waved to Nate and Amaya, who were already walking away, his arm slung around her shoulders.

Jax glanced over at her. He hadn't bothered her about her weird reaction on the Waverider, and she hadn't offered any information.

"Your mom will be excited to see you," she said.

He shot her a grin, catching her drift. "Yeah. You two be safe. Text us when you get to Star City."

"Will do," Ray responded, but Jax didn't look in his direction. His gaze stayed on Sara.

He didn't move to hug her, and she was grateful. Even in the wide open parking lot, she was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

"We'll see you next week," she told him, flashing him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

He mock-saluted her with a brief "Captain" and set off toward his own destination.

* * *

After they caught their train to Star City, Sara steered Ray to the back of their car and maneuvered him into the window seat. He shot her an alarmed look, but tolerated her sudden burst of paranoia. He attempted to make small talk with her, which she ignored for the most part, examining the other passengers and often leaning around him to get a better view out the window. He quieted down after a while and leaned back in his seat, slipping on earbuds to listen to an audiobook- nonfiction, knowing Ray.

Sara settled into a steady rhythm of surveillance. She spent fifteen seconds on the window, then scanned the cabin back and forth five times, looking for movement or signs of concealed weapons. She performed a head count to check that the eighteen occupants were still in view, then switched her attention back to the window to start the cycle over again.

After twenty-two cycles, Ray leaned forward to get her attention. "Hey," he whispered. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," she hissed, and raised an arm to push him back into his seat, but he grabbed her wrist.

"Your hands are shaking," he accused. "What's going on?"

She stared at her trembling fingers, unsure of what was more concerning- that she had started panic in the first place, or that she hadn't noticed. She ripped her arm from Ray's grasp and rose out of her seat. She looked out the back door under the guise of checking the other car to avoid his gaze.

"This is a vacation, right? You aren't keeping anything from us?"

"I- don't. I don't know what's happening," she stammered. She suddenly became aware that she was breaking out into a cold sweat. Her breathing picked up. She could control it if she wanted to- her league training was never far from her reach, even now, but...there was no need to.

"Ok," Ray said, volume still low. He examined her for a moment. "When was the last time you slept? Or ate a meal sitting down?"

"Probably the last time you did," she shot back.

"Well I've been doing both of those things, which probably answers my question. Seriously, Sara, is there any reason we should be worried? I don't want to knock your instincts, but I think maybe they're a bit...off, right now. Temporarily."

She finally turned to glare at him, but restrained herself when she saw that his concern was genuine and not condescending. And of course it was. It was Ray. "I've been laying down to sleep, but nothing's been happening," she admitted. "Jax made me call for a break. Nothing's wrong. There's no- I'm not keeping anything from you."

Ray nodded and rose. "Okay. Well, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna take the window seat."

He motioned again after she made no move to take his spot, so she reluctantly settled into his spot.

"I'll keep an eye on things," he promised.

"Keep an earbud out," she ordered. "The one near the aisle."

"I will, but look? I've got my suit. It's in my pocket. You're still you so you've got what, four weapons on your person? At least? Even if something goes wrong, we can handle it. So just...you don't have to sleep, but take the other earbud. Close your eyes. See what happens."

Sara laid back against the seat and forced herself to close her eyes and time her breathing to the cadence of the narrator. She was unconscious within minutes.

* * *

She awoke to a nudge from the shoulder she was sleeping against.

"Sara?" Ray hissed.

She shifted off his shoulder and slumped back against her seat. "Hmm?"

"What's your dad's address?"

She to a moment to piece together through what he was asking. "Was just gonna go to the bunker," she told him.

"It's two in the morning. By the time we get across town, they'll be gone."

They lapsed into silence as the train lurched to a stop. The other people in their compartment began to chatter and rustle for their luggage.

"The clock tower," Sara murmured.

"What?"

"Across from the bank. Used to live there."

"You're not sleeping in a clock tower," Ray told her. "I can call your dad. What's his number?"

Her eyes shot open and she grabbed Ray's arm. "No. Not tonight."

Sara was positive that if she saw her dad that night she would start crying and never stop. Just the thought of seeing him conjured a lump in her throat that constricted her breathing.

Ray typed rapidly on his phone. After most of the crowd had cleared, he stood. She shouldered her duffel bag and led their way off the train.

The Star City train station was nearly empty and the crowd from their train quickly thinned. Sara stumbled over to a wall and sat on top of her bag. Ray's phone chirped, then rang, and he held it up to his ear.

"Hey," he greeted. "Sorry for the short notice. Yeah, we just got in."

There was a long pause. The edges of the lights that lined the hall were blurry. Sara blinked slowly to clear them. The paranoia was back, stronger than before, and she tried to widen her focus to look for any movement in her field of vision.

"Both, kind of. I don't know when the last time she slept was."

That did her in. Sara dissolved into tears. Her sobs were noisy and they echoed across the hall of the station and hurt her chest. She wiped at her sides of her eyes and tried to keep her field of vision wide, but the effort was useless. She was failing completely.

Ray kneeled down in front of her and placed a hand on her arm. "Sara, you need to calm down. Someone's going to think I'm kidnapping you."

That got a hysterical chuckle out of her that came out sounding more like a cough, because Ray just looked so earnest. What the hell was she doing freaking out in the train station of all places? Sara could count on two hands the number of times she had cried in the past ten years and whatever was happening to her now wasn't worth a single tear.

She shut her eyes and bit down hard on her tongue. No more. The feeling was as well-practiced as a swing of sword. Learning not to cry had been high on her list of priorities as a young assassin.

Ray's hand stayed on her knee, and Sara kept her eyes shut. He asked a question every couple of minutes, but she ignored him. Finally, his phone chirped and he pulled her upright by the hand.

"Our ride's here," he told her.

She walked out of the station on her own two feet. Ray took her bag and led the way. Sara had no clue what arrangements he had made. A hotel, maybe, though she didn't know how to work around the fact that she was legally dead.

The answer was waiting for them in a dark red coat, leaning against the passenger side door of her car. Felicity tossed her keys to Ray. "You're driving," she told him.

She kept a steady stream of chatter as she directed Sara into the backseat and slid in next to her from the traffic side of the car. "Don't go home yet, Ray," she said. "Hop on the interstate."

"Why?" he asked, but she ignored him, turning to Sara instead.

"You look nauseous," she said. "When did you stop crying?"

Ray answered for her. "Right after we hung up. I asked her to. I didn't want to attract any attention."

Felicity took one of her hands. "Do you trust me?"

Sara nodded. As much as she trusted anyone right now, she trusted Felicity.

"Put on your seatbelt. After we merge onto the interstate, I'm going to roll all the windows down. Ray, you're going to gun it. Don't worry about speeding tickets. I've got a couple of connections in the mayor's office."

"That's still no reason to-"

"Go the limit then, but no slower."

The streets were nearly empty, and it was so late that only caution lights were flashing at the intersection leading onto the interstate.

Felicity lowered the windows as they picked up speed, and the wind that rushed into the car began to roar and toss Sara's hair around wildly.

The miles piled up behind them. One exit past town. Two. The overload of sound and feeling didn't stop, and the pressure she had pushed down into her chest burst. It was too loud to hear the worst of the sounds that she was making as she stared intentionally at the back of the seat in front of her.

She was a mess. Her hair whipped through streaks of snot, which dried almost immediately in the wind. Her muscles were finally, finally loosening. Once the heaving, heavy part had passed, Felicity rolled up the windows and the torrent of stimulation stopped.

She pulled Sara into her shoulder. "This is an old sweatshirt," she assured. "Ray, there's some tissues in the glove compartment. Can you hand them back to us? Crank the heat, while you're at it. I'm getting chilly."

"Should I head back to town?" he asked.

"Are you ready, Sara?" Felicity asked. Sara wiped her face with some of the tissues she had been handed, and shoved them into the seat pocket in front of her. She was still crying, but it was gentler, and she wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt.

"Yeah," she responded. "I'm ready."

Felicity wrapped her arms around her, and Sara fell asleep once more to the pattern of street lights flashing past.

* * *

When Sara opened her eyes, the sun was setting, and she was in a bed that she figured must be Felicity's. Her limbs were stiff as she rose. Downstairs, someone opened and shut the fridge.

She breathed, reaching her left arm over the opposite shoulder and inching it down as far as she could. Judging by the light of the sky, she'd slept for nearly fourteen hours. Her head was fuzzy, and she was covered in sweat, but she felt more calm than she had been in weeks.

"Sara?" a voice called. Felicity.

"Hey," she responded. She shuffled over to the stairs so she could see down to the bottom where Felicity was standing in sweatpants and a S.T.A.R. labs t-shirt, hair pulled into a ponytail.

Felicity looked her over, then pointed up the stairs toward the bathroom. "There's a bottle of water in there. Drink it. Take a shower. I'm ordering fried rice- how spicy?"

"Are you ordering from the place on twenty-fifth?" Sara asked, her voice a little hoarse.

"I'm insulted that you even had to ask."

"Three peppers, then. Where's my phone?"

"In the fruit bowl, turned off. Just like mine. Ray checked in with your team. They're all fine."

The water pressure in Felicity's shower was much better than aboard the Waverider. Sara usually stole most of the hot water- Captain's privilege, though it had been a habit long before she was in charge- but here she was able to crank up the temperature without even a twinge of guilt.

The food was there by the time she had changed into mostly-clean pajamas from her duffel and settled on the couch downstairs. Felicity turned on some inane sitcom without asking and they ate in comfortable silence.

""Don't you have vigilante duty?" Sara asked, once she was just picking around the leftover stalks of broccoli.

"I called in some vacation time. I would lie and say it was before Ray called but you probably know some freaky League of Assassins tells and could call me on it."

"I'm sorry," Sara said. "I didn't mean for that to happen."

"Of course you didn't," Felicity insisted. "It's a classic case of burnout. I pulled stuff like that all the time in college."

Sara didn't want to mislead her. "It was more...complicated than that."

Felicity shrugged. "I mean, I figured. I didn't think it was a coincidence that you showed up looking like a ghost a few days after you and Oliver had a heavy talk. It's fine, Sara. We can talk about it in the morning, if you want, but you don't owe me any sort of explanation. It happens. I'm glad I could help."

On screen, the show came back from commercial. The kids of the family attempted to sneak into the oldest sister's prom in dresses and tuxes that dragged the floor. Felicity laughed, unrestrained, and some piece inside of Sara settled back into place.

* * *

As always, reviews are appreciated!


End file.
